The Silent Wife: From the No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes a gripping new crime thriller (Will Trent Series, Book 10)

by Karin Slaughter

  “Jeesh.” Miranda retrieved her phone. Her thumbs started sliding across the screen. “You’re right. I sent Gerald the Google alerts that highlighted articles that reported similar attacks to the one Beckey suffered. Have you seen the pictures of her? She nearly died. A lot of women are dead. I’m not just investigating a string of murders. I’m hunting a freaking serial killer.”

  Will wasn’t going to indulge her. “What patterns did you show Gerald?”

  Miranda worked her phone as she talked. “The cases I sent him, all of the women were abducted in either the last week of March or the last week of October. All of them disappeared in the early morning hours between five and noon.”

  He saw Faith stiffen, because the time of the women’s disappearances was a detail she hadn’t been privy to.

  Will said, “We already know about the dates and times. What else?”

  “Did Gerald tell you about the hair stuff? And the stalking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Which cases did he show you?”

  Will hedged, “Which cases do you think he showed us?”

  “I need to start from the beginning.” Miranda turned the phone sideways and angled it so that both Will and Faith could see the screen. “Okay, so here’s the original Excel spreadsheet showing all the raw data I sent to Gerald. My search criteria was women missing in Georgia over the last eight years. It took days, sometimes weeks and months, even a year, to track down what happened after they were reported missing. We are talking thousands of hours of my time to gather this into a searchable database.”

  Will said, “Keep going.”

  “This cell tells you what happened to them.” She flicked her finger across the screen to a new column. “The majority of the women showed back up, which is common. Women just need a break sometimes. The rest of them ended up getting arrested for drugs or whatever, a few of them were in women’s shelters because their husbands were abusive. Some never came back, but maybe they left the state or ran off with a boyfriend. But a small number of them turned up dead. Look at this column.”

  Faith read, “Joan Feeney. Pia Danske. Shay Van Dorne. Alexandra McAllister.”

  The same names that Faith had weeded out from Gerald’s list.

  Will said, “According to Gerald Caterino, there were more victims than what you have in the columns.”

  “He was wrong. I swear, he was just seeing what he wanted to see. I bet he never showed you my total list here.” She swiped the screen again. “This cell has the October abductions over the last eight years. This has the March ones. Gerald dismissed a lot of the names I gave him because he either couldn’t get in touch with the family, or they didn’t report hearing about a missing hair item, or the victims never reported that they felt like they were being stalked. But I thought a few of the women belonged on the list because they fit the other criteria.”

  Will saw an imperceptible shift in Faith’s features. She was reading ahead. She knew Miranda was onto something.

  Will asked, “What about the other criteria?”

  “Like I said, they all disappeared in the morning, sometime in the last week of March or the last week of October. Except for Caterino and Truong, they were going about a fairly predictable routine—on a run, heading to work, hitting the supermarket or drugstore—when they were abducted. Then, however long later, they were all found in the woods, off the official path, with their bodies mutilated in what the coroners chalked up to animal activity.”

  “Chalked up?” Will asked.

  “We’ll never know, because no autopsies were ever performed.” Miranda said, “This serial killer is clever and he knows the system. He’s spreading the victims across jurisdictions the same way Bundy did. He’s torturing them like Dennis Rader. He’s extremely methodical, the same as Kemper. He’s smart enough to leave them out where animals will get to them. I don’t know, maybe he’s got some kind of twisted idea of Wiccan or Druid religion? This smacks of animal sacrifice, but where the animals get to eat the humans.”

  Will thought she had gone off the rails, but he wasn’t going to correct her.

  “Give me that.” Faith grabbed Miranda’s phone away. She started typing. “I’m emailing this spreadsheet to myself.”

  “Good,” Miranda said. “Because I need help. I can’t get the information I need to make the final connection.”

  “What information?”

  Miranda held out her hand for the phone.

  Faith made sure the email had gone through before she turned it over.

  Miranda tapped to a different tab on the spreadsheet. “Beckey was the first victim eight years ago in March. But she lived, so he took another victim, Leslie Truong, and murdered her. Then in November of that year, another victim showed up in the woods surrounding Lake Lanier in Forsyth County.”

  Will recognized the details. “Pia Danske.”

  “Right. Danske was reported missing the morning of October twenty-fourth. She was found dead two weeks later. Her body showed signs of animal mutilation.”

  Will knew all of this was already public record. “What else?”

  “Okay, so, Beckey was his first victim. We can all agree that the killer started eight years ago, right?”

  Will nodded, because she didn’t know about Tommi Humphrey and if it was up to him, she never would.

  Miranda continued, “Since then, we have two victims a year. Multiply that times eight and a half years. Add in Beckey and Leslie and that equals nineteen victims total. But if you add up the names on the list, we only have sixteen.”

  Faith had accessed the spreadsheet on her own phone. She visibly worked to cover her shock as she asked, “What’s this column with three names? Alice Scott, reported missing October of last year. Theresa Singer, March, four years ago. Callie Zanger, March, two years ago. Who are they?”

  “Singer had PTSD and something called dissociative amnesia. She can’t remember her own name most days. Scott suffered a TBI. Her parents are taking care of her on their horse farm. Zanger lives and works in downtown Atlanta, but she won’t return my calls. I DM’d her on Facebook, sent emails. I even mailed her an actual snail-mail letter. She sent me a cease and desist. She’s got a lot of money or something.”

  “Back up,” Faith said. “What are you saying?”

  “Those are the three missing victims from the last eight years,” Miranda said. “Singer. Scott. Zanger. They’re the women who got away.”

  Grant County—Thursday

  21

  The tiny broken bones in Jeffrey’s nose clanged like cymbals with every word he spoke. He didn’t have the option of silence. He was at the tail end of the morning patrol briefing and already he could feel the bruises welling up under his eyes. In normal circumstances, he could walk across the street and have a doctor set the break, but he didn’t want to admit that one of those doctors had broken his nose by slamming the door in his face.

  If the eight patrolmen who were watching Jeffrey thought it was strange that their boss had toilet paper shoved up his nostrils, no one had the balls to comment. Jeffrey had given them the highlights of the Caterino attack and the Truong murder, holding back the more troubling details. He believed in showing his work as much as possible. These men all lived in town. They had grown up here. They felt the same responsibility toward the community as Jeffrey. More importantly, he was about to give them a shitty assignment, and he needed them as on-side as was humanly possible.

  He pointed to the numbers on the whiteboard, saying, “There are 11,680 vans registered in the tri-county area. The Grant County share is 3,498. Of those, 1,699 are dark in color. I want each of you to take a list from the stack on your way out. Do your normal patrols, but any time you catch a breather, I want you knocking on doors, eyeballing the owners, running down their details. If the name Daryl comes up in any way, shape or form, call me, Frank or Matt immediately. If anyone looks even remotely suspicious, then call me, Frank or Matt immediately. Don’t push them. Take a step back. Make the call
. Keep yourself safe. Understood?”

  Eight voices called, “Yes, Chief.”

  Jeffrey stacked together his notes. Looking down sent a small explosion into his nose. He sniffed back blood. Stars filled his vision.

  Frank came into the room as the patrolmen left. He told Jeffrey, “I talked to Chuck Gaines. He’s going to put out an alert on the student message board to see if we can locate the three women and the man in the black knit cap that Leslie Truong saw in the woods.”

  “Good.” Jeffrey wasn’t holding out any hope. They had already put out an alert for witnesses the day that Caterino had been attacked. Twenty-two students had come forward, but none of them had seen anything. At least half of them probably weren’t even in the woods at the right time.

  Jeffrey said, “Fucking Lena.”

  Frank put his foot on one of the chairs. He rested his elbow on his knee.

  Jeffrey gathered he wasn’t airing out his undercarriage. “Say it.”

  “Lena’s a good cop. She could be the best cop on the force one day.”

  “Not from where I’m sitting.”

  “Then stand up so you can see better. The kid made the same mistake I would’ve made.” Frank’s shoulder went up in a shrug. “I was there, too, Chief. I saw Beckey Caterino. I figured she was dead.”

  “Based on what Lena—”

  “Based on, she looked dead. And I’m being honest here. I’m in her shoes, I got a dead student on my hands, I got the gal who found her, and the gal says she wants to walk back, I’m gonna let that gal walk back to campus if she wants to because why wouldn’t I?”

  Jeffrey shook his head, because the more he asked himself the question, the more certain he was that he never would’ve let Truong go off on her own. Even assuming Caterino had been the victim of an accident, Truong was a kid. She’d just found a dead body. You took care of people like that.

  Frank was silent except for the whistle of air through his congested lungs. “Look, there’s a reason I didn’t want your job. It sucks.”

  “You think?”

  “You’re a good chief. I can’t vouch for the other parts of your life. If you were fucking my daughter, a broken nose would be the least of your worries.” Frank smiled without smiling. “When you were in Birmingham, how many murders did you roll up on?”

  Jeffrey shook his head. Birmingham was ten times the size of Grant County. There were over one hundred homicides a year.

  “Probably dozens, right? And even without the DOAs, you saw blood every week, maybe every day. Stabbings, shootings. All kinds of shit. While here in Grant County, we get some ODs, some vehicle fatalities, a few tractor accidents, maybe a couple of knocked-down women.” Frank shrugged again. “You’re bringing Birmingham thinking to Grant County situations.”

  Jeffrey had never seen anything like what had happened to Tommi Humphrey and Leslie Truong in Birmingham. “That’s what I was hired to do.”

  “Then do it. Lena’s got potential. She’s got the instincts to do the job the way it has to be done. You can either be the chief who molds her into a good cop or you can be the asshole who shreds her into nothing because it makes you feel better.”

  “I never took you for a psychiatrist.”

  Frank gave Jeffrey’s shoulder that squeeze you give a man when you’re bringing him to heel like a dog. “I never took you for a cheat, but here we are.”

  “Thanks for the pep talk, Frank.”

  “Anytime, Chief.” Frank graced him with another demeaning shoulder pat before taking his leave.

  Out of habit, Jeffrey flipped the whiteboard toward the wall before following him out. He gathered his notes off the podium. He was rewarded with another pulsing throb in his face. He gently traced the line of his nose. There was definitely something sticking out that should not be sticking out. He held his breath, upping the pressure, trying to click the bones back into place.

  His eyes watered. The pain was too intense. Unless he wanted to look like a 1930s gangster for the rest of his life, he was going to end up having to go to a doctor three towns over who would actually see him.

  “Chief?” Marla walked in with a bag of frozen French fries in one hand and a bottle of Advil in the other. “I got the fries from Pete at the diner. He wants them back.”

  Jeffrey pressed the bag to his nose. He nodded for Marla to open the bottle. “Is Lena back yet?”

  “Saw her car pull in when I was toodlin’ back from the diner.”

  “Thanks.” Jeffrey dry-swallowed four Advil as he walked back into the squad room.

  Lena was taking off her bulky coat. She did her usual deer in the headlights when she saw him. He didn’t like the fear he saw in her eyes. Ninety percent of being a cop was dealing with angry men. If she couldn’t handle it from her boss, she wasn’t going to make it on the street.

  He told her, “In my office.”

  Lena followed him inside. She closed the door without being told. She started to sit down, but he stopped her.

  “On your feet.” Jeffrey tossed the frozen bag of fries on his desk as he took a seat. The change in altitude made his nose throb harder.

  “Chief—”

  He jabbed his finger into the photocopies of her notes. “What is this bullshit?”

  Lena sucked in a breath. She had clearly hoped that her earlier ass-chewing was over.

  “Look at them.” He handed her the copies. “You’re a cop. You want to be a detective one day. Tell me what’s wrong with your notes, future detective.”

  She stared at the neatly printed words, the carefully outlined steps of her various actions. “There are—” Lena cleared her throat. “There’s no mistakes.”

  “Right,” Jeffrey said. “No run-on sentences, no stray marks, no cross-throughs, not even a misspelled word. You’re either the smartest fucking cop in this building or you’re the stupidest. Which one is it?”

  Lena placed the copies back on his desk. She shifted on her feet.

  “Which notes do you want me to keep, Lena? Which set do you want subpoenaed by Gerald Caterino’s lawyers? Or Bonita Truong’s, because her daughter was murdered when you told her to go back to the school on her own.”

  Lena kept her gaze down.

  “You’re gonna be sworn in under oath. Which set of notes is the truth?”

  Lena did not look up, but she put her hand on the copies. “These.”

  He sat back in his chair. The frozen bag of fries was leaving a wet mark on his desk. “Where’s your original notebook?”

  “At home.”

  “Get rid of it,” he told her. “If this is your choice, then you need to stand by it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me about your interview with Leslie Truong.”

  Lena shifted nervously on her feet. “I asked her if she had seen anyone else in the area. She said she passed three women on her walk into the woods. They were heading toward the college. Two of them were wearing Grant Tech colors. The other wasn’t, but she looked like a student. Leslie didn’t recognize any of them. I really pressed her on it and—”

  “And the man?”

  “She thought maybe he was a student, too?” Lena briefly met his gaze before quickly looking away. “All she remembered was the knit cap. It was black knit, a beanie type. She couldn’t remember his features, or his hair color or eyes, or how tall he was or how big. She said he just looked like a regular guy, probably a student. He was jogging down the path.”

  “Jogging? Not running?”

  “That’s what I asked, and she said definitely jogging. He wasn’t acting suspicious or anything. She assumed he was a student out for a run.”

  “She said student, meaning he was in that age group?”

  “I asked, and she said she couldn’t say, except that he ran like he was younger. I guess older people, when they run, maybe they’ve got bad knees or they aren’t as fast?” She shrugged. “I’m sorry, Chief. Is she … is she dead because I …”

  Her eyes met his. This time, she
did not look away.

  Frank’s words came back to Jeffrey. He could crush her right now. He could say the thing that would grind her into dust, and she would never be able to do the job again.

  He said, “She’s dead because someone murdered her.”

  The overhead light caught the moisture in her eyes.

  “The vast majority of policing is social work.” He had told her this before, but he hoped like hell this time the lesson had meaning. “I know what it’s like being on patrol. You’re writing tickets all day, looking for jaywalkers, bored out of your mind, then a dead body shows up and it’s exciting.”

  Lena’s guilty expression confirmed he had hit on the truth.

  “Excitement is great, but it gives you tunnel vision. You miss things. You make stupid mistakes. We don’t get a lot of leeway as police officers. We have to see everything. Even the smallest detail can mean the difference between life and death.”

  “I’m sorry, Chief.” She promised, “It won’t happen again.”

  Jeffrey wasn’t finished. “The reason I moved here from Birmingham is because I was sick of locking up one drug dealer for shooting another drug dealer. I wanted to feel connected to the people I was protecting. You can be a good cop, Lena. A damn good cop. But you need to work on that connection.”

  “Yes, Chief. I will.”

  Jeffrey wasn’t sure she would do a damn thing, but lecturing her for another ten minutes or ten hours was not going to change that. “Sit down.”

  Lena sat on the edge of the chair.

  Jeffrey’s nose had started to itch like he needed to sneeze. He put the frozen fries back to his face. “Tell me about the construction site.”

  Lena sucked in a quick breath as she took her notebook out of her back pocket. “I talked to everyone on the site. They’re building a climate-controlled storage facility.”

  Jeffrey nodded for her to continue.

  “There’s, like, extra workmen from what you’d expect. Garage door installers and welders and security alongside the usual contractors and stuff. I was going to type this up, but—”